RTS - We Have Some Sufferers Here

[drfuzzy]

I could see how fundamentalism and the fear of hell could be traumatic enough for some people that they have a form of PTSD. Hell is a sick concept. Not only do you have to be afraid that you might go to hell but if you don't raise your own kids or convert your loved ones, they will go to hell also and it would be your fault.

I have spoken with more than one person who reported feeling terrified when they returned home from school and their parents were gone. They thought that their loved ones had been raptured without them.

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death.) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship, and there is a group organized  to oppose their incursion into public schools.  I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

This doesn't surprise me at all.

Oh hell yeah. (pun intended) Sure, I once went home, found nobody there . . . when they finally got back, they found me crying in my closet. I was sure that they had been Raptured. My mother was an evil psychotic bitch who beat the crap out of me daily, while quoting scripture. I still have a burn scar on my right leg from where she pressed the tip of her iron, saying that "now you'll never forget what hell is going to feel like".  PTSD.  Oh yeah, I have some. Now, she probably would have been dangerous without the psycho fanaticism, so I can't COMPLETELY blame religion for the hours of therapy I've been through. (They were very helpful.) But oh yes, there were huge elements of abuse in the ultra-right-wing protestant snake-handling, speaking-in-tongues cults that I knew as a child.